How does NTLite bypass the Cortana nag screen during setup?

[ZorkLVM]

nuhi must be a genius, because only his method of disabling that screen after removing Cortana from Apps seems to work.

I removed just Cortana with dism and I'm still presented with the Cortana setup screen "Let Cortana help you get things done"...

How on earth did you do it?

I know the deprecated `SkipMachineOOBE` or `SkipUserOOBE` work, but they can lead to problems -- and that's not how nuhi did it.

 

[garlin]

There's no magic. OOBE's Privacy Settings doesn't actually confirm if Cortana's installed or not. It's just a pre-scripted options screen.

Part of NTLite's value is nuhi's attention to fine details. After you've removed Cortana, there's no sense in being asked this question in OOBE. Therefore as a courtesy, he applies a long known reg key to bypass this specific screen.

A quick Google seach on "Let Cortana help you get things done regedit" would have revealed the trick.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search]
"AllowCortana"=dword:00000000

 

[ZorkLVM]

Wow, that actually disables the OOBE Cortana screen? It's like the only thing I haven't tried yet. Is there a preference on which pass to apply that in autounattend?

 

[garlin]

Logically it would be "specialize" pass, since "oobeSystem" is obviously too late. The NTLite answer is to integrate the reg file from Registry, so it's already part of the install image.